In April 2022, after 76 years in existence, the Air Force Association rebranded itself as the “Air & Space Forces Association,” a move that it said would better reflect its mission to advocate for 21st-century American power not just in the air, but in space as well.
The reaction to that announcement inside the Colorado Springs offices of the Space Force Association — a separate nonprofit launched in 2019, the same year the U.S. Space Force was founded as a standalone military service — landed somewhere between surprise and incredulity.
“You’ve got to be f——— kidding me,” one source said, describing the reaction among SFA officials who learned of the AFA name change just days before it was announced.
That’s just one example of the complicated and at times tense relationship between the two competing organizations, both of which lay claim to advocating for the Space Force and its Guardians, and to being a key liaison between the Pentagon and the powerful defense industry firms seeking to do business in the increasingly vital and financially lucrative space domain.
In statements to The Washington Times, both organizations and their leaders stressed that they believe they can work together to advance American spacepower. But sources familiar with the matter described behind-the-scenes dynamics that at times have bordered on acrimony.
This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen sources, including high-level defense industry leaders and Pentagon officials, some of whom were granted anonymity to speak openly about the current state of Space Force advocacy and its relevance to U.S. national security.
Why it matters
There are reasons why the friction is important. The two organizations could, for example, take different positions on a budgetary issue, or the development of a new capability, or the implementation of specific points of American national security strategy in space.
That battle of ideas could impact policy debates in Washington at a crucial moment for the growth of the Space Force.
At a deeper level, SFA argues that AFA’s advocacy work has a built-in, fundamental conflict of interest that could rear its head if Defense Department officials or budget-writers on Capitol Hill eventually need to choose between directing money to the Space Force or to more traditional Air Force assets such as fighter jet programs. SFA says that the Space Force needs an organization pushing for its priorities only, rather than one also advocating on behalf of the broader Air Force and its needs.
AFA rejects that argument and says that both airpower and spacepower are “foundational to our national defense,” and that it can and does effectively advocate for both. AFA and its backers contend that the U.S. needs to direct money both to modernizing the nation’s Air Force and bolstering U.S. space-based capabilities, rather than pitting them against one another.
“Are they supposed to be the only ones who can talk about space?” one pro-AFA source said, referring to SFA and its position.
Several defense industry sources said the existence of both groups and the conflict between them can present problems. One source said that leading defense companies are asking, “Who are we going to be writing a check to,” referring to the fact that both SFA and AFA hold their own high-level space-centric conferences across the country. Defense industry firms sponsor such events and contribute financially to the groups that organize them.
Pentagon officials and defense industry leaders routinely attend both SFA and AFA gatherings. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s chief of space operations, spoke at last October’s AFA Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington and at SFA’s Spacepower 2025 conference in Orlando last December.
One senior defense industry official said that companies are generally supportive of SFA’s approach and its “focus on the unique needs of the Space Force.”
Space Force structure
Since its founding in 2019, the Space Force has existed as its own military service within the Department of the Air Force, under the authority of the Air Force secretary. It’s largely similar to how the Marine Corps exists as its own branch but is still technically within the Department of the Navy.
That structure — the existence of the Space Force as a separate military branch but without a civilian-led department atop it — is partially fueling the debate about who can best advocate for the service and whether it needs, or deserves, its own dedicated 501c3 advocacy group.
Specialists say the establishment of a “Department of Space” or some other Pentagon reorganization could make sense in the future, but policymakers must be clear on what they want to accomplish with such a step.
“We need to think hard about what problem we are trying to solve with a reorganization like that and how the reorg would bring about the desired outcome. Is a reorganization merely moving around the deck chairs?” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“There will be interservice tugs of war about funding no matter who reports to which secretary at the Pentagon,” Mr. Swope told The Washington Times. “We should think about what we are not doing or cannot do with the current structure before we decide we need to change it. It may make sense, but we should be clear about why we are doing it.”
The Space Force Association, or SFA, was created in October 2019, two months before the Space Force itself was created during President Trump’s first term in office.
The SFA was founded by retired Air Force Col. Bill Woolf, who served more than 24 years in uniform and worked extensively on space and nuclear operations.
Sources said that in 2019, AFA officials approached Mr. Woolf about housing the fledgling SFA inside the broader umbrella of the AFA, with the understanding that it eventually would be spun off into its own entity.
That initial partnership didn’t materialize.
In a lengthy statement to The Times, SFA explained its rationale.
“SFA was founded on the belief that space is a distinct warfighting domain and has unique challenges and needs, as well as a distinct culture, that is separate from the Air Force,” the statement reads in part. “The relationship between SFA and AFA is best described as friendly competition or a dual-track support system. We are two independent nonprofits that often share the same goals while at the same time having different philosophies.”
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Burt Field, the president and CEO of AFA, said his organization wants SFA “to be very successful in their support of the Space Force.”
“Ensuring a superior Space Force is a shared mission for our two organizations, and we consider them partners in this endeavor,” Mr. Field told The Times in a statement. “Our organizations have a formal memorandum of understanding, signed nearly three years ago, and we continue to look for ways to strengthen this relationship.”
That memorandum of understanding was signed around the time AFA changed its name to the Air & Space Forces Association, though it’s unclear what the document has meant in practice. One source inside SFA said that “we’ve never had a discussion about the MOU since the MOU” was signed.
Several Pentagon officials said that any tension between the two sides has not affected either group’s work with the Space Force. One current defense official, however, described a view inside the Pentagon that AFA is the “big brother,” given its long and storied history, while SFA is seen as the upstart “little brother.”
There are a number of other organizations advocating for both the space industry and the U.S. Space Force specifically.
The nonprofit Space Foundation, founded in 1983 and host of the high-level Space Symposium conference each year, said the existence of so many players on the scene is a positive sign.
“Space is genuinely underappreciated and underappreciated by the larger public as to our dependence on it,” Rich Cooper, a spokesperson for the Space Foundation, told The Times. “So whatever these groups can do to help leaders better understand the importance of space to our national and economic security, all the better. That’s critically important for everyone.”
The ideas space
SFA and AFA, in addition to holding their own events and having distinct advocacy philosophies, are also competing in the ideas space.
SFA recently launched its National Spacepower Center, a space-focused think tank and research center that wants to carve out a lane separate from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, an affiliate of AFA. Mitchell’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence has for years been the only Washington-based, aerospace-focused think tank, and it has built a reputation as a one-of-a-kind headquarters for aerospace research, events, and policy papers.
In a statement, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute, denied that there is an “adversarial” relationship between the two sides and said that he welcomes any serious effort to advance U.S. spacepower. He also said that he sees the opportunity for collaboration moving forward.
“At the end of the day, this isn’t about organizations — it’s about ensuring the United States develops the strategies, capabilities, and policies needed to achieve space superiority. We welcome additional voices to that effort and believe the conversation is strongest when it’s informed by facts, professionalism, and mutual respect,” Mr. Deptula said.
The first paper from SFA’s National Spacepower Center examined the degree to which the Space Force and industry partners should pursue “dynamic space operations.”
Such operations refer to satellites and other systems able to maneuver, be serviced and refueled on orbit, make rapid orbital changes, and take other steps to make them “dynamic” in the space domain, rather than stationary and limited to one specific parameter.
Some specialists have urged the Pentagon to focus heavily on those capabilities. But the SFA paper, written by retired Air Force Col. Daniel Dant, raised questions about that point of view.
“Many proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellations are designed to be short-lived and cheap, so heavy investment in refuelable or highly maneuverable platforms is not always economical or necessary for these missions,” he wrote. “Moreover, over-reliance on maneuver also risks rapid depletion of valuable propellant and can increase operational complexity, making command and control and space traffic management more difficult under high stress situations.”
That paper and the timing of its release underscored the degree to which the two organizations could present competing ideas.
A month earlier, retired Space Force Col. Charles Galbreath, a senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute, authored his own in-depth paper on the issue.
“Legacy U.S. space system designs were premised on a peaceful, non-hostile space domain and operated static missions in energy-constant orbits,” he wrote. “Space is now a warfighting domain, with new and growing threats to space systems, plus increasing operational demands on U.S. space capabilities. New capabilities that increase the resilience and effectiveness of the U.S. military space architecture are needed. Space operations must similarly transform to one defined by dynamic space operations — employing these new capabilities with the ability to frequently and rapidly change parameters to achieve mission effects.”
After the launch of the SFA initiative, Mitchell Institute leaders reached out to SFA to see if the two centers could collaborate on a research paper. SFA declined the invitation, sources said, citing a need to “establish its own culture” separate from Mitchell and AFA.
